NEW Logo

The software also has the icon of a little orange cat. The cat is also a useful icon because it is synonymous with curiosity, dexterity, flexibility, and sometimes being a bit mischievous. Most teams have mascot, why not us?

I worked on several iterations of the logo, where the cat looked slightly sinister, so I decided to add a pair of cat heads with less slanted eyes, the second a little smaller, because most peer mentor relationships involve a little bit older pre-teen working with a slightly younger peer.

Interface

The menus of the website mirror Scratch command blocks and try to be tonque and cheek around using command such as "if" and "when" while still listing the information that will be on the website. I think it's important to keep the interface very clean and not cluttered because the tutorials and videos will be chock full of complex images.

I'm still very undecided on this one - I think I could use a few of these for a DVD menu and not necesarily the web page. I also am wondering about the old practice of including text versions of graphic buttons on the bottom of the page....it doesn't seem like many web designers still do this, since connection speeds have gotten better and less people turn off the graphics. I'm also undecided if I think it's better to have the navigation on the top versus on the left side of the page. Either way, it needs to be consisent.

Theme - Scratch Blocks Transformed

For the look and feel of the website, I think it's important to retain the look of the software itself, but I really like the visual metaphor of building blocks as well. One of the most relevant usuability factors of Scratch as software for youth is that it incorporates different types of multimedia (sound, image, animation, triggers, movement, scoring, sprites interacting) and allows people to build on each component. I'd to mirror this metaphor with the peer mentoring aspects, so I used a lot of references to the Logo command block shapes and used the same colors used in the software's interface. Also, some react to the software that it look too "kiddy" so I also want to be conscious of it not looking TOO boxy or pre-school like. The audience is primarily youth and staff working with youth in technology afterschool programs, so as I brainstormed the graphic look of the website, I thought about how they would react to colors and if they would understand the references to the software.

I also have a huge pool of photos of youth using technology at the Computer Clubhouse, most of it taken by youth themselves. I tried to stylize these photos to look more like cartoons or rasterized movies like Waking Life. It also make the photos look more like the clipart many of the youth use in Scratch interactive projects. In addition, I cropped the images and removed some distracting backgrounds in order to focus on the intended theme of each image. Each of these images represent different parts of the Scratch experience, such as images/photos, sound, and connecting with the physical world through sensors. I also used photos of youth being mentored by adults and by other youth, and tried to represent these aspects all together as building blocks of Scratch Team. (A progression of these images in an animation may make a great splash page.)

If you'd like to see all the images from my finished image assignment PDF, download it here!